Related Tags:

Becca Ritchie

Becca Ritchie claims she's from Mystic Falls, but really, she lives in Atlanta where humidity is her greatest foe. She loves comic books, blue nail polish and Jonathan Taylor Thomas circa 1995. She frequents Twitter to dish about CW shows, and when she's not blogging, she reads too many YA and NA books. She's an Amazon Bestselling Author of the Addicted series, a New Adult Romance. Follow her on Twitter @Becca_Ritchie.

[Spoilers for episode 3 from here on out]

Season 8 is moving in the right direction by tapping into the roots from season 1. Let’s stretch our minds to a time so long ago when young Sam was yanked from his life in law school. He had no interest in joining the family business, and if it wasn’t for the death of his girlfriend on his apartment ceiling, I doubt he would have climbed into the Impala’s passenger seat. In this episode, Sam says that he’s done with hunting. What’s his alternative? Maybe going back to school. At first I was baffled by the concept. Sam in school? What a weird sight! And then I remembered it’s not weird at all. Not when we started this journey with Sam at a university. Let’s discuss.

We began the episode with a heart-ripping opening. A jogger yanked out another guy’s heart with his bare hand. Dean says, “Two hearts gagged, same city, six months apart.” He predicts a witch or a “heart-sucking possessed crack whore bat.” Sam and Dean track down the heart-ripping jogger, who turns out to be health conscious but not in a Satanic way. They track another lead to a murdered police officer, heartless, and his murderer, a man named Arthur. Due to a holy water test, Arthur’s demon-free but he continues to babble an incoherent language. When Dean and Sam leave, Arthur uses part of a bed-frame to try to remove his transplanted eye.

Using their sleuthing skills, they follow the origin of the transplant to Brick Holmes, a pro-athlete and organ donor before he died. Brick’s mother remains coy, and the Winchesters leave the Holmes residence with few answers. However, they’re on the right track considering a woman who war-painted herself with blood and ripped out a heart approaches Mrs. Holmes. She says, “Brick’s heart beats inside here now. Brick gave me new life. I can feel him.” Creepy.

Arthur’s babble isn’t just babble. It’s an ancient Mayan language, and Arthur was repeating that “the divine god of maize, ka’kau’, is born.” The Winchesters break into the Holmes residence and learn that the mother shares a closet with her son — strange! Nothing like a nod to incest for die-hard “Supernatural” fans. Brick Holmes isn’t her son though. He’s her husband or lover and also a Mayan who — in his multiple lives — always becomes a professional athlete. Dean says, “their athletes were treated like kings. The Mayan jocks made sacrifices to ka’kau’ by ripping out their hearts and eating it.” Yep, he’s getting full off of hearts. Mrs. Holmes admits the only way Brick could stay young forever was to eat the life-giving organ.

Brick did have a heart of his own. He drove off the bridge because he couldn’t endure the lifestyle any longer. Understandable. In order to end the heart-ripping cycle they must kill the girl who has Brick’s heart. They do. In a stripper joint with a knife to the chest. She burst with a few questionable moans and pink smoke. An easy kill, but we quickly switched to the “talk” that’s been occurring throughout the episode.

Sam says, “When this is over, when we close up shop on Kevin and the tablet. I’m done.” The year that he took off, he had a normal life. And he wants it back. Dean’s not understanding how he could want a life outside of hunting, partly because Dean seemed destined for this job. Sam left the world for a huge period of time as a young adult. We end with wistful music and Sam dreaming of a place with a beautiful woman, a picnic, sunshine and an Australian Shepherd.

Do you think “Supernatural” is going back to its roots? Or are you tired of the Winchesters trying to quit their hunting lifestyle? Were you sad to see Cas, the new angel Alfie, Kevin Tran and Crowley missing from the episode? Even without the angel lore, I liked the addition of new mythology — and heart-eaters make for some good gore on screen.